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Day 03 - Smarter Communication (Middle School)

Today was an incredible day of creating, innovating, teamwork, communicating, and more creating. We began by presenting our prototypes from yesterday. We gave feedback with the sentence frame “I like… I wish… What if…” During our feedback phase, we realized that if we combined two of the prototypes, both would be improved immensely.The quality of feedback was quite impressive.

Next, we had a FaceTime presentation/interview session with Thom Ingram and his high school engineering students, from the Innovation Center. At first we had some COMMUNICATION issues, but then, we resolved the tech problems and had a great learning experience. Mr. Ingram and his students provided us with great insight on communication and all that it entails.

We then jumped into the next design challenge: Design a way to get information to people with limited access to technology. We began by brainstorming who our users would be. After looking at some statistics, we realized that people in poverty, people in poverty ridden countries, and the elderly were the least “connected” people in the world. Next, we discussed how improved communication could benefit these people. We did some research and then began to ideate, then prototype. Three of our innovations are designed to help people in third world countries, and one is designed to help elderly people.

Tomorrow we will finish, present, and get feedback on this design challenge. Many of the kids agreed that today was the best day yet!

Ava and Jocelyn: We enjoyed the guest speaker that we talked to through FaceTime.

Niamaya and Maddie: We enjoyed taking apart and seeing the inside of a digital camera.

Will: My favorite part of the day was prototyping our device for helping people communicate around the world.

Clyde: I enjoyed and figured out how to get your hands really messy.

Andres and Ramon: We enjoyed making our prototype.

Ms. Goebel: I am proud of my students and the great work they did today!

Innovation Center

The Innovation Center is a comprehensive research and development center. It provides an environment tailored to aspiring student inventors, designers and entrepreneurs.